


Do Away Now, With Childish Things

by Anonymous



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Book 1: The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson), Gen, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Not Canon Compliant - The Heroes of Olympus, Pre-The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29756880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: There has never been an omega child of Poseidon. Percy Jackson must come to terms with being the first.He wondered if that was because Poseidon had never saved them, treated them with the same indifference most of the gods treated their children, or if it was because he took them, drowned them when their mothers exposed them to the water, pulled them down to watery depths to die...He was only twelve…“The gods hate us for what we are,” Luke muttered, “You’ll be tested, over and over again, and it won’t ever be enough. When you fail, they’ll see it as proof that they were right to hate you, never mind what you’ve done before.”
Relationships: Luke Castellan & Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson & Sally Jackson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27
Collections: Anonymous





	Do Away Now, With Childish Things

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for some homophobic language, sexual harassment, hazing. It is the 2000s, after all.

Percy didn’t know why he thought it would be any different at Camp Half-Blood. 

It had taken three days for someone to notice— and it only took those three days because Percy was unconscious for two of them. Laying in his sleeping bag on the cold floor, the words of the other campers rang between his ears like bell resonance. 

“Bedroll for you, _malakos,_ ” he had laughed, not meanly, but not in a very friendly way either. “Gotta toughen you up for tomorrow!”

Blinking at the Greek word, Percy had fumbled the bedroll as Luke gently steered him by the elbow to the smallest empty patch of floor; the one closest to the door. “What happens tomorrow?”

“Just some tests,” Luke had smiled slyly, and helped him unroll the sleeping bag, lingering by his side. “You’re a curiosity, Percy Jackson. It’s not everyday a camper slays the Minotaur, and a _malakos?_ Never.”

“What does that mean?” Percy hissed as he tucked himself in. Luke only smiled wistfully, and it wasn’t a nice smile. 

“You’ll understand soon enough,” he said, “Let’s see if you’re above it.”

The part of him that instinctively understood ancient Greek only ever translated the word as _soft_.Percy could be slow on the uptake, but he was far from stupid. The campers only ever called the more effeminate men _malakos,_ and always as a taunt, sometimes in a friendly way, more often as an insult _._ They’d sussed out he was an omega. He didn’t think he had to be above his own nature, but apparently, the gods disagreed. Throughout the week, the tests were equal parts interesting and exhausting, and on the rare occasion they were even fun.

It was Annabeth who explained it to him, as she had explained so many things about this strange new world he’d found himself embroiled in. 

“A _malakos,”_ she said, then hesitated, eyeing him after Clarisse nearly drowned him, “Mortals call them male omegas.”

It explained so much and disappointed him in equal measure. The entire time he'd been at camp, only Luke and Annabeth had called him by name. Everyone else called him _malakos,_ and he’d had to fight hard to bury his temper every time he heard it. By the third day, he’d gotten into multiple fights over it.

He had a _name,_ and he would fight people until they used it. 

Fighting at camp was much different than fighting in school. 

At school, teachers would punish him, put him in detention, and when that wouldn’t stop him, suspend him entirely, always culminating with his expulsion. His fifth grade year, he’d gotten himself kicked out definitively from the NYC public school district, after bouncing through all the public elementaries in Manhattan. Most alphas hesitated at fighting an omega, even a male one, but that didn’t protect him for long when he proved himself stronger than most of them, and more willing to throw down too. Percy smelled like saltwater taffy on the beach— the good stuff, from the shore, not the cheap stuff from the supermarket. Beneath the bland, vaguely sugary scent was a salty, briny bite. It snuck up on the senses like a warhead’s sourness on the tongue. To be challenged so blatantly by someone who smelled as sweetly submissive as Percy wasn’t often an insult alphas could let slide. But alphas didn’t fight omegas; that was an emasculating low, so they got their bitches to do it for them. 

The first time someone picked a fight with him, he was in the fifth grade, and a gang of omegas jumped him coming out of the subway. He lost, and lost badly. When he got back to the apartment, Smelly Gabe had been there, a grotesque lump on the couch with a plate balanced on his stomach and a tall Coors Light clenched in a meaty fist. On the tv table there were six more empty cans piled high, and the entire apartment reeked like cigarette smoke and garbage. Roaches fell from the door jamb when Percy opened it, and he brushed them off his shoulders with a bodily shudder. They scrambled around his feet as he locked the door— the doorknob, then the two deadbolts, but left the chain for when his mother returned. 

Smelly Gabe had chortled at the sight of Percy’s brutalized face and split and swollen lip and eye. 

“Someone finally thought to teach you some respect, huh?” he swallowed noisily, “Your mother lets you run wild, don’t know how to talk to an alpha right. Mouthy little brat. I told her it was coming.”

His room didn’t have a door that closed all the way, as it was only on one hinge. When his mother saw him, she gasped and dropped the bag of sweets she had brought home. They hadn’t really talked about his choice to present male. As a sexless omega, he had been somewhat coddled. A male one? A walking target. 

Omegas were supposed to present female, and if they were male, it was expected that they were fixed. Otherwise, they’d end up androgynous, with varied hormonal issues, and depending on the presentation of their sexual organs, be able to bear or sire children. Men shouldn’t bear children, and women shouldn’t sire them. 

She had interrogated him, and he couldn’t lie, not to his mother anyway. Her lips had tightened, an expression he had never seen before in her eyes.

“Next time you see them,” she said, “You tell me. And if you’re going to fight an alpha Percy, you have to win baby. Protect yourself at all costs. Don’t let anyone disrespect you.”

He had no intention of ever pointing out the girls who’d jumped him to his mother, but Sally Jackson was a hard woman to fool; sometimes her ability to be in the right place at the right time and ask exactly the right questions was supernatural. One afternoon, when school let out, he caught her leaning on the fence of the middle school. Other students might have been embarrassed to be escorted by their mother home in fifth grade, when nearly everyone walked themselves home, but Percy was happily surprised. 

“Mom!” he gave her a warm hug, deeply breathing her sugary scent. “What are you doing here?” She nuzzled his head and drew him away from her chest, looking over her son. 

“I just had a feeling, and I was off today, so I thought we’d go for a walk in the park.”

The afternoon had been going perfectly. The spring sun and brisk March breeze blew his unzipped spring jacket agape. Scents floated on the wind, drowned out by the smell of the park. Joggers ran on the paths, steadily outstripping the pair. Students wandered about, tiny elementary schoolers with too-big bookbags and teenagers with billowing white t-shirts and sagging pants, and chismosas and chungas pushing carriages while talking loudly in Spanish. Men sat on crates around the tables playing dominoes and smoking, boom-bap rap blaring from an ancient boombox at their feet. 

When Percy spotted them from the corner of his eyes and carefully looked away, his mother noticed immediately, and when he tried to speed up, she grabbed his shoulder. 

“That them?” she nodded her head at the couple, and Percy sighed and shook his head in denial; at her sharp blue gaze, he lowered his gaze and shrugged. 

Evan Bowman and Nina Empacielo were seventh graders. The fight had started when Percy was sitting outside the principal’s office with the other delinquents waiting for punishment. The two of them had been brought in by an exasperated gym teacher, and everyone immediately knew why. They could smell the sex on them, and Percy couldn’t stop his nose from wrinkling.

“The fuck you looking at?” the older boy had sneered, “you want some of this, faggot?”

“Please,” Percy had snapped, “Your omega doesn’t even want you. Or are you so dumb you can’t even tell she was faking it?”

It was true. He smelled salty, not like the full and emanating stench of Gabe, but watered down and vaguely milky. She smelled vaguely of distress, not pleasure. At his words they had both reddened angrily. Everyone knew she hadn’t cum, but no one other than Percy was naively oblivious enough to point it out.

Two days later, Nina and her friends had jumped him, defending her alpha’s reputation. It didn’t matter that it was eight seven and eighth graders beating on a single fifth grader. Percy had spoken out of turn, and insulted her partner, implied that she couldn’t please her alpha. 

“Pay attention, Percy,” his mother whispered, and smiled sadly. “This may save your life.”

“Ay!” she shouted, and Percy jolted. He had never heard his mother sound that way! “You jumped my baby?”

“Really Jackson?” sneered Nina, and her gaggle of groupies laughed along with her. “You went running to mommy? You don’t even have your own pack to defend you?”

Percy blushed with anger, clenching and unclenching his fists, trying to control his temper. 

“Drop your bag, Percy,” his mom said, steely, and Percy obeyed, “You’re gonna fight this little girl who thinks she’s grown, and you’re going to win.”

“I’m not fighting a fifth grader,” Nina scoffed, but Percy could smell her weakness, and latched onto it. 

“What, are you afraid you’ll lose in a fair fight?” Percy taunted, “Too scared of a ten year old? Let's go!”

That was the first time he ever got into what he mentally thought of as “Mom-sanctioned fights.” He had beat up Nina Empacielo while his mother stared down her cronies to keep them from interfering. Mom-sanctioned fights were the fights he fought when alphas and their bitches thought they could talk down to him because he was a male omega, because he hadn’t been fixed, because he was alone and didn’t have a pack.

He had won. Nina’s reputation never recovered as far as he knew. The next day, to save face, Evan Bowman had publicly reamed her for shaming him, for being such a weak omega, and they had broken up two weeks later. 

Percy still got the shortest stick; someone had recorded the incident and the video of the brutal beatdown got back to administration, who after glancing at his long, long record and poor grades, had promptly kicked him out of the NYC public schools and all the nearby charter schools for good. 

“He needs a firm alpha,” the guidance team had concurred at his expulsion hearing. “You’ve raised that boy wild, and it’s not good for him.”

Contrary to first impressions, Percy didn’t try to get into trouble. He worked nearly as hard at keeping his head down as he did at his school work, with equal success— that is to say, no success. If he wasn’t being kicked out for freak accidents, then he was being expelled for defending himself, and holding true to what his mother taught him.

“Never be on the bottom,” she said, eyes haunted, “don’t ever let them treat you like less than you are. You are worthy of love and respect. But alphas don’t listen to any other language than violence.”

Percy had taken it to heart, because he saw the worst case scenario every time his mother pandered to Smelly Gabe with her own quiet dignity. As much as he adored his mother, and was like her in many ways, they were birds of foreign flocks. Refrain, restrain, hold tight and wait for a moment to strike, her quiet rebellion would have chafed at him until he broke. 

Sally Jackson was a single omega beyond her prime with another alpha’s child; worthless ingrates like Gabe desperate to assert themselves on _someone_ were drawn to her like scum on still sewage puddles. They thought she didn’t have any other options. She endured the constant disrespect and humiliation, and Percy knew it was entirely his fault. An unmated omega could get somewhere, but it was clear that whoever Percy’s father was, he had mated her and left her with nothing but a child in her belly. 

And now at camp, they didn’t even call him by his name, as if he was nothing more than his sex. 

“ _Malakos,_ ” they called him, as if omega was the only thing he was and not Percy Jackson. 

Drowning Clarisse and the Ares cabin with toilet water was only the start of it. 

“My name is Percy,” he snapped back whenever someone called him _malakos._ They smiled knowingly, and it drove him mad, to be the only person left out of the joke. Once he figured out it was an insult, he thought they were calling him a jerk—which he thought was rude because he hadn’t been anything but distantly polite. As the weeks went on, he realized he was missing something, that the word meant something more than he thought it did. Hazing wasn’t new to him, especially in the private schools his mother had resigned herself to, so he tightened his jaw and tried to fuck up anybody who called him it with special disdain.

Fighting trained halfbloods was a lot harder than Nina Empacielo and her worthless little gang. Brushing off the mocking nickname was harder than ignoring Nancy Bobofit’s mean taunts. But he prevailed, because he wouldn’t allow himself to be disrespected for being an omega. His mother was gone...all he had were her words. 

It wasn’t until they were on the truck to San Francisco on his first quest, when Annabeth finally explained. Grover slept like the dead between them, softly bleating in his sleep, his fake feet kicking absently.

“It’s because they think you’re soft,” she mumbled, eyes downcast. “Like the Demeter and Aphrodite kids.”

He frowned. Soft wasn’t exactly a word Percy would use to describe himself, but Annabeth had blushed so hard, he could perceive its warmth even in the darkness, and so he had let it go. 

Even half-bloods got sexEd apparently— the real sexEd, whispered conversations of the taboo between peers and the awkward lessons of fumbling trysts. When Percy returned from Olympus the first time, the camper watched him with interested eyes as if he were something queerly unique, as odd and unnatural as five legs on a horse. Throughout his quest, he had finally managed to suss out more information from Annabeth. Halfbloods called alphas karteros—steadfast— with male alphas being as close to perfection as possible and female alphas the only worthy bearers of children. It was different than it was in the mortal world, but not better. Instead of being an outcast for being a _male_ omega, it was an issue that he was an omega at all. 

But at least he didn’t have to fight everyone anymore, because when he returned from Olympus, they called him by his name, as if he’d had to earn the right to be respected as a person. Percy was willing to forgive, though. He wouldn’t see these people for most of the year anyway. If it weren’t for the odd stares, and constant whispers, he’d have put the whole thing out of his mind, and tried to mentally prepare for a new school.

It hardly mattered anyway. Only Luke spoke to him, in those dying weeks of summer. Even Annabeth was somewhat flustered, both interested and repulsed by his contrary nature. 

It was Luke, the man who had taken him under his wing, who had pulled him aside, and explained it all in explicit terms.

“When they call you soft,” he had said, quietly after an evening of robust sparring, where they both laid heavily sweating from the August heat in the scrub of the forest, “They call you weak-willed.”

Percy had turned his head to glance at the older man. Luke was tall, handsome, and strong, and Percy’s view of his glorious profile was unmarred by the scar Ladon had given him. It had taken a while—sometimes, Percy could be painfully, horribly oblivious, but he had realized upon his return from his quest that Luke was the same as him— a _malakos_ , a male omega to anyone outside Camp Half-Blood, though no one called him that to his face. He must’ve been surgically fixed when he was young, to present so ambiguously omega and obviously male as an adult. His scent was warm, but not sweet, not cloyingly inviting. 

“It’s not better here,” Percy thought out loud, “Is it?”

Most half-bloods tended to take after their godly parents. Though gods and goddesses were equally represented, all the Olympians but Aphrodite, who was born of a different Titan, were alphas. Percy had always been in the minority, as a male, unfixed omega, but in his school there were usually an equal split of alphas and omegas. At Camp Half-blood, the alphas so outnumbered omegas he felt even more like a freak on the training grounds than he ever had in any of his classes. 

“No,” Luke said bitterly, his smile not reaching cold blue eyes, “but it’s not worse either. Just…different. You’ve started to prove your worth. Not everyone can go toe to toe with the God of War and escape alive, you know? But then, it’s not the first time Ares lost to an omega, is it? And now, everyone’s just waiting and watching to see what you become.”

“They don’t expect much, huh?” Percy grimaced. Low expectations were nothing new. 

“On the contrary,” Luke murmured, his eyes far away. “Do you know why the Greeks reviled _malakos?_ ”

Percy had shrugged, but there was a venom, an acid tightness to Luke’s voice he had never heard before. 

“They think we,” and it was the first time Luke had ever counted himself among Percy’s kind, and so Percy was surprised, “are inconstant, easily swayed, fundamentally weak and prone to cowardice. They admired what they considered to be an active sex, and disdained the passive sex. The male form is perfection, and to be a passive receiver in a perfect form is considered a lie, a deception of the worst kind. Except, the deception is our nature, so we must breed evil and taint whatever seed we receive, and so our seed is equally untrustworthy. And so we were erased, and destroyed. They used to expose any omegas at birth, at the command of the gods. You’re the first omega born to Poseidon to ever survive, did you know that?”

Percy did not know that, and he would have been happy never knowing that, because Luke hadn’t said male omegas were never born, just that they never survived. He wondered if that was because Poseidon had never saved them, treated them with the same indifference most of the gods treated their children, or if it was because he took them, drowned them when their mothers exposed them to the water, pulled them down to watery depths to die... 

He was only twelve…

“The gods hate us for what we are,” Luke muttered, “You’ll be tested, over and over again, and it won’t ever be enough. When you fail, they’ll see it as proof that they were right to hate you, never mind what you’ve done before.”  
  


“Is that what they did to you?” Percy couldn’t stop himself from asking. By then he’d heard the gossip, about Luke’s failed quest. About how he devotedly served the Camp that was his only home anyway, attached and afraid. How his _softness_ had to have been paramount to his failure in some way. Something like fear rose in Percy’s gorge. The others saw him now, but how long would that last? His father admitted he regretted he was ever born. Zeus’ disdain...would it never end? 

“That’s not even the worst of it. Western civilization and their gods are a cancer. They’re stagnant, petty and cruel. They only relive the distant past. But we’re here now, Percy. They can’t just kill us anymore. And soon, you’ll have to make a choice.”

A twisted smile transformed Luke’s handsome face. “Will you do away with your softness?” he softly said, “and fail anyway? Because eventually, there’ll be that one battle you can’t win.”

A thousand retorts ran through Percy’s head, all of them inappropriate, and none capable of answering Luke’s question. Could he do away with his softness?

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I got this idea after reading about the Iliad for my philosophy class. Malakos means "soft," but like denoting a lack of discipline, wishwashiness. The word shows up when describing Paris of Troy, and also while describing older homosexuals and when they disparage women. It also shows up frequently in the New Testament. In modern Greek, malakas is like "wanker" or "jerk" in English and is the single most common insult. Here, it's used in Camp Halfblood like a form of hazing-- like being an intiate in a fraternity or sorority and they call you a derogatory nickname until you 'earn' your name by becoming a full brother or sister.  
> If there's interest in this I might do a one-shot for each book and beyond. I've loved ABO for a really long time and quarantine and rereading PJO made me finally want to write one :.D


End file.
